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Thursday, February 2, 2012

WILSON WINS REVERSAL OF CONVICTION AND 20-YEAR SENTENCE

Roger C. Wilson obtained a reversal
by the Georgia Court of Appeals of the criminal conviction and 20-year sentence
of a Firm client. The man had been
convicted in a DeKalb County jury trial of breaking into a largely abandoned
building in a blighted part of DeKalb County and stealing from the building two
used vacuum cleaners allegedly worth approximately twenty dollars.
The man, an older local denizen of modest means and hard times, was
harshly sentenced under the Georgia recidivism statute because of the existence of multiple prior
convictions over a number of earlier years, all for minor, non-violent offenses.

At trial no direct evidence was
presented of the client’s having broken into the building or stolen the vacuum
cleaners. The principal evidence used to convict him was self-inculpatory statements
that he was alleged to have made to a policeman who detained and interrogated
him. The client denied making the statements. But at trial the policeman was permitted to
testify about the alleged statements, even though the policeman, when
detaining and interrogating the client, had never informed him of his
Constitutional rights (to remain silent, to have an attorney present before questioning) as is required by the
Georgia and U.S. Constitutions and the U.S. Supreme Court’s Miranda opinion. With that testimony of the policeman, the client was convicted,
and sentenced to 20 years, to serve 10.

Wilson did not handle the case at
trial but was engaged to represent the man post-conviction in an attempt to
obtain an amelioration of the conviction or sentence. Wilson first filed and pursued a motion for
new trial with the trial court in which the man was convicted, arguing that a
new trial was necessary because of the improper police interrogation of the man
which rendered inadmissible any testimony regarding the confession allegedly
obtained during that interrogation. When
the trail judge denied the motion, Wilson filed and pursued an appeal in the
Georgia Court of Appeals.

After full
briefing of the case, the Court of Appeals agreed with Wilson and reversed the
man’s conviction in its entirety, including the sentence. Thompson v. State, No. A11A1798, 313 Ga.App.844 (2012).

The Court of Appeals began its
opinion by pointing out the substantial hurdles faced by those appealing a
criminal conviction:

At the outset, we
note that after a defendant has been convicted, “we view the evidence in the
light most favorable to the jury's verdict, and the defendant no longer enjoys
the presumption of innocence. And we do not weigh the evidence or determine
witness credibility, “but only determine if the evidence was sufficient for a
rational trier of fact to find the defendant guilty of the charged offense
beyond a reasonable doubt.”

* * *

[W]e note that “[u]nless clearly erroneous, a trial court's findings as
to factual determinations and credibility relating to the admissibility of the
defendant's statement at a Jackson-Dennohearing will be upheld on
appeal.” And in conducting our review, “we
may consider trial testimony in addition to the testimony submitted during the
motion to suppress hearing.

However, despite these hurdles, the
three-judge Court of Appeals panel considered
the arguments made by Wilson and unanimously agreed with them. It stated that, although the client

was not handcuffed or told that he was under
arrest, the officer confiscated the contents of his pockets by placing the
items on the patrol car before continuing to detain him. Under
these circumstances . . . a reasonable person would certainly perceive himself
to be in police custody. Additionally, the accusatory nature of Officer
Findley's question required the benefit of Miranda warnings, because although officers may make initial
on-the-scene inquiries without Miranda
warnings to ascertain the nature of the situation at hand, “[t]he questioning
must not be aimed at obtaining
information to establish a suspect's guilt.” Officer
Findley's question, which came after a witness identified Thompson as the
suspect, was clearly aimed at establishing his guilt. Accordingly,
Thompson's admission regarding the vacuum cleaners should have been suppressed.

The Court then found
as is required for a reversal, that the error in admitting the faulty testimony
must be viewed as having been prejudicial to the client at trial:

Having determined that the trial
court erred in admitting [the] statement, we must now determine whether “there is a
reasonable possibility that the improperly admitted evidence contributed to the
conviction....” In this regard, the
record reflects that the jury deliberated for some time and requested direction
on the witness testimony and a lesser-included offense of criminal trespass; there was testimony that the daycare center
was located in a neighborhood subject to high crime and drug activity and that
the owner had previously—and since—had trouble with burglaries; the witnesses
gave inconsistent descriptions concerning the color of the vacuum cleaners and
the suspect's clothing; and one eyewitness repeatedly referred to [the client[ by
another person's name. Accordingly, we conclude that there is a reasonable
possibility that the improperly admitted evidence contributed to the jury's
verdict.

The case
and reversal demonstrate that even notwithstanding the substantial hurdles
facing one on appeal who has been convicted of a crime, sometimes erroneous
trial rulings and results, and violations of Constitutional rights, can be
vindicated and corrected on appeal.

The reversal also
supports the proposition that Constitutional rights must be protected, and
violations of them vindicated, whether the defendant is a CEO, CFO, or
government official (whom Wilson also has represented in state and federal cases)
or a local vagabond of extremely modest means improperly interrogated about
an alleged theft of old vacuum cleaners from an abandoned ghetto building. If the Constitution and
Constitutional rights (all of them) are not vigorously protected at both ends
of that social spectrum, then no one can have confidence that his or her rights (under
whichever numerations in the Bill of Rights) will be respected at any point in
between.

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A trial and appellate lawyer in Atlanta, Georgia, representing individuals and businesses in a wide variety of legal matters - business and commercial, personal law and personal injury, criminal defense and other government enforcement - in all Georgia state and federal courts.